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Monday, October 1, 2012

Girls and Team Sports

I entered the gym and inhaled the familiar scents of
leather, varnish, sweat, and popcorn. The sounds of court shoes thudding and squeaking across the highly
polished wooden floor combined with shouts of “got it!”, “mine!”, and
“outside!” I scanned the bleachers along
the volleyball court, found an open spot, climbed the stairs, skillfully
situated my padded portable bleacher seat among the other parents, and waited
for the match to begin.

As I sat among the other fans and watched my daughter and
her teammates run through their warm-up routine, my thoughts drifted back in
time to my own junior high athletic adventures.
Unlike my daughters, I possessed very little athletic ability and thus
my experience with team sports was extremely limited and short-lived. In fact, my only experience on a volleyball
court came during the dreaded P.E. classes where we played on teams chosen by the
domineering “captains” that the gym teacher deemed skilled and competent enough
to organize teams comprised of fellow classmates. The good players, those who actually played
on the junior high team, always lined up in front of the group, eagerly
anticipating the inevitable moment when their names would be called out: “Sharon!”, “Daphne!”, “Vicki!”, or
“Diane!” Once called, these girls raced
over to their captains and whispered to them the next players to choose in
order to enhance their odds of winning the day’s matches.

The rest of us stood behind these gifted physical specimens, looking at the ground, shuffling our feet, and cracking lame jokes to help hide our embarrassment over
our inability to make that damn ball go where we wanted it to go when we hit
it. I was almost always the last one
selected for a team. Naturally, I was
also never selected by the gym teacher to be a captain.

Oddly enough, the grueling adolescent rite of passage of
P.E. team selections was not the most humiliating aspect of my volleyball
career. Oh, no, the really miserable
stuff happened out on the court.

Once I stepped out onto that gym floor, the intelligence
that propelled me to the top of my class academically spilled out of my body
and onto the floor in a puddle of incompetence.
No matter how hard I tried, I could not serve the ball over the net, not
even using the sissy underhand technique.
Bump, set, spike? Are you kidding
me? For me it was more like dodge, duck,
and run. The only piece of useful advice
I remember from my more athletic classmates is, “Dawn Hobbie, if you’re going
to hit it TO the net, hit it OVER the net!”
Because obviously I completely misunderstood the point of the game.

Basketball wasn’t much better, although I did somehow manage
to make the school team two years in a row.
Either the coaches felt sorry for me or they recognized and appreciated
my ability to out-run all the other girls in my class. Whatever the reason, my earning the right to
wear those uniforms changed my life well beyond high school and helped shape my
lifelong opinion on the virtues of team sports.

Even though I was more a benchwarmer than a game changer for
my junior high and high school basketball teams, I learned the value of working
as a single unit toward a common goal. I
grew to understand and appreciate the way individual talents, if used
correctly, help to ensure the overall success of a team. Tall Vicki, who struggled with coordination, developed
into a skilled blocker and rebounder as the team’s center. And Sharon’s quickness, combined with Paula’s
amazing athletic giftedness, helped serve the team well as the two guards
became leaders both on the court and off.
Even my limited jumping and running skills sometimes contributed to the
team’s success – as long as I remembered to get the ball to someone with a
higher basketball IQ than I possessed when I snagged an occasional rebound. Add to that the coach’s determination to
teach me how to shoot a free throw, and I actually made a sporadic contribution
to the team, albeit a very minor one. I
also learned when the return on my investment of time and energy was no longer
great enough to warrant my continued efforts to stay on the team.

All of these lessons helped me succeed as an adult,
especially in the male-dominated business world of the 1980’s. In the work place I knew the value of not
only using my talents to help my company succeed, but I also understood the
importance of looking for and evaluating others’ talents to properly direct
them to an area where the company would benefit most from their abilities. I also learned to appreciate the value of recruiting
quality members to a team and helping them develop their talents (by the way,
contrary to the philosophy of my junior high P.E. classmates, public ridicule
is NOT an effective tool for promoting success).

Fortunately for my daughters, the athletic gods decided to
smile upon them and bless them with more talent and skill than I possessed
(they also come from a good gene pool: my father-in-law and two of his three
brothers were athletic powerhouses at Northwestern University in the 1930’s and
1940’s. Or so they tell me). While I experience great pride when I watch
their successes on the court or softball field, I know from experience that not
all girls are created equal. However,
the fact that their athletic IQ might not measure up to their intellectual IQ
need not suggest that they cannot benefit from the experience of team sports.

For example, the
simple act of practicing something over and over again until she reaches
perfection in just one area can teach a girl the value of persistence (not only
did I learn to shoot free throws, but I also
eventually learned how to serve a volleyball - both underhand AND
overhand). And sometimes a girl learns
that, no matter how hard she tries, she just doesn’t possess the skill or
talent required to perform a certain task.
Team sports teaches a girl in this situation that the best thing to do
is to look for someone on her team who possesses the talent that she lacks and
then work together to achieve team success.
(No matter how many laps Coach made me run, I never developed the timing
and precision needed to successfully shoot a layup. Instead, I looked for someone else to pass
the ball to rather than create a turnover.
In the same way, I am terrible with tax codes and balancing
accounts. Thus, I hire an accountant to
help me in those areas. Teamwork =
success!) Frankly, belonging to an
organized group – such as an athletic team - can change a girl’s life. Membership in a group of other like-minded
girls that celebrates together and cries together and represents something
bigger than just a single girl on her own can give a girl a reason to get up
every day, go to school, and stay out of trouble. These things teach a girl how to work hard to
achieve a goal, and give her the confidence she needs to face a challenge and
seek out ways to overcome it. These are
the REAL reasons I encourage not just my own daughters, but girls everywhere to
participate, at least once, in a team sport.

Most of the time, a team’s success and the lessons its individual
members learn are not reflected by the numbers on the scoreboard.

Do your daughters participate in team sports? Did you play any sports in school? What was your favorite lesson learned from playing? Be sure to continue the conversation in the comments section below!

8 comments:

Team sports also teaches girls how to cooperate and get along with other girls. The most "prized" sports for girls have historically been individual - tennis, gymnastics, swimming. Boys have been learning for years how to be good teammates, usually while girls were on the sidelines cheering them on, competing for the attention of boys. Team sports for girls shows them they can be the strong, powerful ones, in concert with other strong, powerful girls. Essential.

Lynne, such great points - especially the part about empowering our girls so they learn how they, too, can be strong. There are so many, many benefits to playing team sports, particularly for our girls. Thanks for reading and for your comments!

I agree! I, too, was not athletically involved in school (I was a band geek!) But I LOVE organized sports and have enjoyed every aspect of my kids' involvement in them! I see them growing as an individual because they are learning to be a team player. And it thrills me to see the friends they are making along the way...more team players! They are learning hard work, dedication, humility, sacrifice, teamwork.....I'm so thankful for the opportunities our kids have! Thanks for the reminder, Dawn!

Hi, Stefani! I participated in band, as well, while in junior and senior high school. I have to say that a lot of the benefits from team sports are also taught through organized groups like the school band. It is in band that we learn how to finesse and combine our musical talent with others in order to create one, beautiful piece for the audience. I love all the benefits music provides our kids, also. But, there was something about belonging to the basketball team that really left a positive impression on me and I am glad to be able to pass this experience on to my girls. So glad to know that you believe your kids are learning from their experiences with team sports!

Hahahahahahaha! I am having difficulty pulling myself together long enough to compose a simple reply to your comment!!! I COMPLETELY missed a humorous opportunity there - except I was so focused on the later part where I described the excruciating pain of never being picked first for a team. And then there's the wonderful tidbit of game advice the girls used to shout out to me that has, thankfully, stuck with me all these years later. So, now you see why I prefer to totally shut down during the games....

Team sports teach kids so much; responsibility, accountability, cooperation. While I participated in lone sports as a child, my children are thriving in both team and individual activities. The joy and lessons they're deriving from these are laying the groundwork for adulthood.

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I write the blog, "Since You Asked...." It's a blog about life, and how we can make the world around us a better place. And sometimes I throw in some anecdotes about my family because, hey, if you can't laugh at yourself, who CAN you laugh at?